Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

ty

You; but if in any part of this, Your Modesty thinks me guilof what I affure you I deteft; continue to be what I believe You, and confirm as well the Judgment as the Opinion of,

My LORD,

Your Grace's

moft Obedient,

Humble Servant.

[ocr errors]

PREFACE..

By Mr. D RYDEN.

OR this last half Year I have been troubled with the difeafe (as I may call it) of Tranflation; the cold Profe-firs of it, (which are always the moft tedious with me) were spent in the History of the League; the hot, (which fucceeded them) in Verfe Miscellanies. The truth is, I fancied to my self a kind of eafe in the change of the Paroxism; never fufpecting but that the Humour wou'd have wafted it felf in two or three: Paftorals of Theocritus, and as many Odes of Horace. But finding, or at least thinking I found, fomething that was more

pleafing in them, than my ordinary Productions, 1 encourag'd my self to renew my old acquaintance with Lucretius and Virgil, and immediately fix'd upon fome parts of them which had moft affected me in the reading. Thefe were my natural Impulies for the Undertaking: But there was an accidental Motive, which was full as forcible. It was my Lord Rofcommon's Effay on Translated Verfe, which made me uneafie 'till I try'd whether or no I was capable of following his Rules, and of reducing the fpeculation into practice. For many a fair Precept in Poetry, is like a feeming Demonftration in the Mathematicks; very fpecious in the Diagram, but failing in the Mechanick Operation. I think I have generally obferv'd his Inftructions; I am fure my Reason is fufficiently convinc'd both of their truth and ufefulness; which, in other words, is to confefs no lefs a vanity than to pretend that I have at leaft in fome places made Examples to his Rules.

Yet withal, I must acknowledge, that I have many times exceeded my Commiflion; for I have both added and omitted, and even fometimes very boldly made fuch expofitions of my Authors, as no Dutch Commentator will forgive me. Perhaps, in fuch particular paffages, I have thought that I difcover'd fome Beauty yet undiscover'd by thofe Pedants, which none but a Poet cou'd have found. Where I have taken away fome of their Expreffions, and cut them fhorter, it may poffibly be on this confideration, that what was beautiful in the Greek or Latin, wou'd not appear fo fhining in the English: And where I have enlarg'd them, I defire the falfe Criticks wou'd not always think, that those thoughts are wholly mine, but that either they are fecretly in the Poet, or may be fairly deduc'd from him; or at least, if both thofe Confiderations fhould fail, that my own is of a piece with his, and that if he were living, and an Englishman, they are

« AnteriorContinuar »